My Two Cents

Apparently, we are as arrogant as the French would have us believe.

A poll taken earlier this year, and reported by The Washington Post, shows that the majority of our countrymen believe they are above average in the following categories: honesty, common sense, intelligence, and looks.

Now, call me crazy, but the fact that 94% of American believe they are above average in honesty seems a rather ironic. And the idea that 89% of Americans label themselves above average when it comes to common sense is, well, nonsense. (See Exhibit A) Many of the 86% of Americans who believe they have above average intelligence are just plain wrong. When I read that 79% of Americans reported above average looks, I immediately thought of an old Seinfeld episode, The Wink:

JERRY: Elaine, what percentage of people would you say are good looking?

ELAINE: Twenty-five percent.

JERRY: Twenty-five percent, you say? No way! It's like 4 to 6 percent. It's a twenty to one
shot.

ELAINE: You're way off.

JERRY: Way off? Have you been to the motor vehicle bureau? It's like a leper colony down there.

ELAINE: So what you are saying is that 90 to 95 percent of the population is undateable?

JERRY: UNDATEABLE!

ELAINE: Then how are all these people getting together?

JERRY: Alcohol.

Funny, yes. But I think my grandpa put it best when he, while sitting on a bench in a busy shopping center, calmly conjectured, “Looking around, I don’t know how people can think God doesn’t have a sense of humor.”